The Proportionality Principle

The executive branch of government has taken resort to the courts over the action by the Opposition, in control of the legislative branch by less than 1 per cent, to amend the numbers on the Committee of Selection (CoS) of parliament and to take control of it by awarding itself a 6: 4 majority. The CoS, dubbed not without reason, ‘the mother committee’, has the privilege of constituting all the other parliamentary committees. The opposition wants the formation of the other committees to follow the same membership composition of the CoS. If the APNU/ AFC opposition’s interpretation of the law is upheld, then the PPP will be completely locked out of any meaningful input into the parliamentary process.

The gravamen of its argument is that the Speaker and the Combined Opposition used its 1 seat majority out of 65 seats (1.5 per cent) at the plenary level to transmute this into a 1 out of 10 advantage (10 per cent) at the CoS level. This discrepancy becomes even starker when the total number of raw votes are compared: the Opposition actually received only a 0.8 per cent advantage over the government.

For its part, the government had proposed that a 5: 5 split between the government and the Opposition reflected a fairer allocation based on the Proportionality Principle immanent in the Constitution. This principle has been the foundational principle of representation since 1964. The government has made reference to Articles 60 and 160 of the Constitution and the provisions of the Elections Laws (Amendment) Act No 15 of 2000.

In addition and more specifically Standing Order 94 (1) of the parliament states: “Every select committee shall be constituted as to ensure, as far as possible, that the balance of parties in the Assembly is reflected in the committee.” The constitutional provisions all refer to the electoral system and the need to maintain proportionality between the votes obtained by the individual parties and the seats they end up with in parliament.

This was succinctly summarised on the GECOM website: “Under the current system which was adopted after the amending of the Constitution and the Representation of the People Act {Constitution (Amendment) Act No 3 of 2000 and Election Laws (Amendment) Act No 15, 2000} in November, 2000, all members of the National Assembly are to be directly elected. Twenty five (25) to be elected from the ten (10) geographic constituencies and the remaining forty (40) elected from a national “top-up” list to guarantee a very high degree of proportionality.”

To emphasise the overriding need for proportionality, GECOM points out: “On February 13, 2001, conscious of the need to ensure the constitutional requirement for proportionality, the National Assembly further amended the Representation of the People Act, Constitution (Amendment) Act No 1, 2001 and Representation of the People (Amendment) Act 2001 to allow the National Assembly to have at least sixty five (65) members and allow GECOM to allocate “overhang seats”, if required.

Overhang seats would be required if a party wins a disproportional number of constituency seats thereby giving it an advantage over other parties. Under these circumstances, GECOM would award overhang seats to the national top up to ensure that the advantage is removed. It is pellucid that after going to such lengths to ensure proportionality of votes from the people to be reflected in the respective voting strength in parliament, the framers of the constitution would completely eviscerate the principle at the points where it becomes most meaningful: the committees. Considering the history of the framing of our constitutional principles, the principle of proportionality, based on fundamental fairness, cannot be sacrificed at the altar of bureaucratic efficiency – ‘gridlock’, according to the opposition.

To maintain the principle of proportionality, the framers went as far as integrating such devices as the “Largest Remainder – Hare Quota (LR- Hare)” formula. Let us use this formula to the composition of the selection committee. It will deliver a 5:4:1 split between the PPP, APNU and AFC.